Employment Certificate

A few days after we submitted our visa application, we received a request to submit supplementary documents.

“Your CV was not considered as work certificate and was not accepted. Please provide local or foreign employment certificate with related work contents in economic industries or field. And the certificate shall be issued by the company shown on your tax statement which paid salary and hired you in the financial year. Also, the certificate shall have your employment period, work position and content, company logo, company information and signature of person or supervisor in-charge.”

At first glance, I thought this sounded concerning. Did we make a mistake on our application? Did they find something suspicious?!

Though uncommon in the US, it turns out that an employment certificate is a customary practice in Taiwan. The certificate is basically a short letter in which your company verifies what you wrote on your resume is true. It needs to be on company letterhead and signed by HR or your supervisor. Thankfully, we just needed to provide one employment certificate. The certificate had to be from the company that is on the W-2 we submitted.

Example of an employment certificate:

Worried that our old employers would be confused about an employment certificate, Baba and I drafted a letter they could repurpose. Fortunately, both companies seemed unfazed by it and sent back a signed certificate/letter within a few days. Whew, one hurdle down! We uploaded the certificate in the applicant portal and again, now we wait.